Examines the forces that have deflected U.S. Government publication from becoming the public enterprise that Congress had conceived in the nineteenth century. Walters covers everything from the deeply embedded ideas of the American political consciousness and its inhibitive effect on the production, distribution, preservation, and quality of U.S. Government documents to reasons why the executive department circumvented the U.S. Government Printing Office to the causes behind the conspicuous lawlessness of government publication to how the folkways of science served to constrict the sphere of government publication to a narrow strip.